These $10 peeling foot masks do what my $35 pedicures can't

At the beginning of the year, I challenged myself to stay out the nail salon in order to cut back on beauty spending, but scrubbing my feet at home was not doing the job. Then thanks to YouTube, I learned about peeling foot masks. If you are totally unfamiliar with Korean peeling foot masks like I was, here’s how they work: They peel layers of dead skin from your feet that you otherwise wouldn’t get to by simply doing a foot scrub.

Here’s how this little at-home, foot-peeling experiment went.

Mika Robinson / Hello Giggles

The foot masks are pretty simple to use. You start by soaking your feet in warm water to soften the skin. Next, you put on booties that contain an exfoliating chemical that eats away at the dead skin on your feet for 60-90 minutes.

The masks felt pretty weird at first.

I have this thing when it comes to my feet being wet and contained in something — I hate it. To me, wearing these booties felt like I had on cold wet socks. I didn’t enjoy any second of it, to be honest.

You probably shouldn’t try to do much while you have them on.

I tried walking from my bedroom to the kitchen to get food, and it was pretty much a disaster. I ripped one of the masks a bit (not enough to stop it from working, though). Also, I couldn’t walk normally. The masks are plastic, so walking in them was interesting, to say the least. When you remove the booties, you won’t notice much of a difference in the state of your feet.

So, did they work?

Mika Robinson / Hello Giggles

After three days, layers of dead skin started peeling off my feet. At first, I thought there were crumbs at the foot of bed. They ended up being small pieces of dead skin that had flaked off my feet while I was sleeping. Disgusting? Yes, but amazing. Because of this part of the process, I recommend wearing socks pretty much all the time until the peeling is over.

Mika Robinson / Hello Giggles

Tip: You can speed up the peeling if for some reason you can’t wear socks 24-7.

Mika Robinson / Hello Giggles

While manually peeling the skin off is not recommended, soaking your feet in warm water will help your feet peel faster. I noticed every day when I took a hot shower my feet would peel more. So, if you’re too embarrassed to head to your yoga class with peeling feet, hopefully a foot soak will help remove some of the skin.

Final thoughts:

The foot mask definitely did what I needed it to do, which was to get rid of dead skin on my feet and reveal smooth skin underneath. It looks pretty disgusting while the skin is peeling, but when it’s done, your feet feel 10 times smoother. While the process was anything but fun, at the end of the day, I got the results that I wanted, and that’s what matters. I would definitely use these again. Plus, they cost less than some of the better known brands out there.

Mika Robinson / Hello Giggles

They removed more dead skin on my feet than any pedicure ever has in my life.